Tag: voters

Categories
Campaign 2013

Snapshot # 3: The voters anonymous

The noise from the election campaign is becoming just that. It’s just like listening in to a mass meeting by a storm of locusts – noisy as ever but rarely makes sense. It happens every election. We kick off hoping to discuss issues, plans, projects and directions for the economy and society but more often than not we end up discussing scandals, allegations, ad hominem accusation and more such filth. This time round there is no shortage of finger pointing: amateur sleuths, wannabe lawyers and born-again-doubters are suddenly all into scandals and -gates. I’d pinpoint the genesis of this particularly heavy wave to the moment when the Sliema Local Council began to fall apart.

Now we have Oil Procurement gate replete with presidential pardons and alleged implications at ministerial level. We have Abela-gate with secret recordings allegedly uncovering a politician openly admitting what could amount to influencing the police force. We have the double edged sword of Zarb-gate: on the one hand a union caught trading in influence and on the other hand an alleged collusion between the businessman involved and the nationalist party. Meanwhile serious accusations of suspect funding to both parties have been swept under the carpet conveniently as each party prefers to concentrate on its scandal of choice – leaving questions about how millionaire campaigns are funded suspended in thin air.

This post can easily be misconstrued as being an attempt at minimising the importance of having an efficient system that uncovers any kind of fraudulent activity. It is not my intention to do so. What I intend to point out though is that much of this caravan and circus will eventually peter out come the 10th March. The horror, the shock and the awe that some politicians feign when confronted with proof (as demonstrative a proof as is available) will soon be relegated to the general “forget-me” bin only to be recycled five years down the line. Honestly. Do you remember the fuss and fantasy generated by Mistragate last time round? What of it?

The truth is that such shenanigans and uncovering of modus operandi of politicians and friends of politicians only SEEM to have become nastier. In reality our political system is geared to co-exist with the circles of power that surround it. Whether it is the police, the legal system, the big business or the unions, alliances are made and broken and fool you are if you think that any of the lot is innocent of such tomfoolery. The charade of investigations and holier-than-thou pronouncements (or as Toni Abela would have it… my banana is cleaner than yours) is just that.

My question and next point is how much does that influence the voter. All these theatricals are for the voter’s inconvenience in the end. They are meant to point out the inadequacy of the other side because the other side is Corrupt/Hapless/Undisciplined (take your pick). Does the voter care? Reading Roberto Saviano on La Repubblica I had a chance to confirm what could be a Mediterranean or even a European trait. Oftentimes the voter is just as enmeshed in the power circles that are at work. The difference in the voter’s case is that he falls further down the line of enjoyment but still feels the compulsion to confirm his participation and thus develop a legitimate expectation. It’s all about a job, a sick relative or a parking space.

Yes. Often the voters’ priority (beyond the obvious partisan impulse) is based purely on one particular service (or inversely is the result of one particular disservice). Is it a refused MEPA permit for altering one’s balcony? Is it a refused rebate on a taxed imported car? Is it a refused access into a school? When you hear the opposition complaining about the “power of incumbency” what they are complaining about is the fact that they have less clout in this not so covert black market where promises to fill gaps in voters’ needs are traded. Do not be deceived. The trading is across the board – opposition or government. The promises are there for everyone. Because Malta Taghna Lkoll is really a euphemism for the politician’s position in the system of cogs and wheels that gets this republic going. It’s not just Labour’s slogan. It’s everybody’s.

Voters will not really be impressed by the many -gates. They either had made their mind up before the scandals surfaced or had their ideas confirmed by the plethora of accusations. In some quarters pundits will try to sell the idea of a “responsible” vote one that supposedly is made in the best interests of the country. It’s a load of bull really. Those very pundits are motivated by the cogs and wheels that get this country going. Knowingly or unknowingly their vote is pre-conditioned by this state of affairs.

A responsible vote is one that tries its damn best to change the system. It is one that requires at least 2000 anonymous voters in one district voting on the basis of what the nation needs and not on the idea that they will get some form of personal reward. Sadly the power of incumbency of the old style politicians will probably mean that the responsible voter loses out. Again.

 

 

 

Categories
Local Councils Politics

The Julian Galea Electors

Julian Galea is the only PN candidate in Sliema to have survived the mess from the previous council. On any other day he would have been hailed as a resilient survivor instead, like an ugly wart, he has become the latest manifestation of the obsessive symptoms of Maltese electoral practices. Galea’s infamy began when he was unlucky enough to be entrapped into a recording of vile pronouncements expounding quite succinctly his base intolerance for anything Labour (Apparently, if you believe Galea this happened two years ago in a meeting between PN candidates – bravu Cirillu). It was too late to withdraw him from the electoral lists (even death is not strong enough to nullify a candidate’s listing once the nominations are closed).

We all know where it went from there. It’s not like no one had heard about Julian Galea’s insipid pronouncements – Labour made it quite a point to have them broadcast all over the place. Armed with the knowledge of Galea’s behaviour any voter in his right mind would have desisted from even mistakenly marking the little square on the ballot beside the candidate’s disgraced name if only to spare him the ignominy of having to remaining in the public eye for an extended period of time.

Julian Galea was – how shall I put it kindly – not just not presentable but also supposedly unelectable. The only persons you’d expect would put their mark near his name in the hope of his getting elected to the Sliema council would be scheming Labourites hoping to capitalise on his glaring presence. Yet….

Julian Galea got 233 votes. Two centuries and a third. He “only” lost 60 votes from his previous tally in 2009. True he got elected on the 17th count when he had still not reached the quota of 517 having obtained 376 votes in all (inheriting 143 from other candidates). What would have been a miserable performance must be seen from another perspective though.  Who were those 233 souls who still rallied for Julian and his phobias?

Forget the noise from the pundits trying to desperately fit the Local Council shoe onto the twin ugly sisters’ General Election feet. This has nothing to do with labour/nationalist swings. It has nothing to do with the supposed “changing of Malta’s political demography”. Here you had the plain and simple reality of what makes up the bulk of Maltese politics.

On the eve of the elections we tried to warn you in “The Ugly Dress Rehearsal“. J’accuse described what the voter should be looking at in the candidates:

It should be obvious to anyone who stops to think for a moment that the ultimate consideration therefore when casting one’s vote is the competence and potential of the candidate. To summarise it more succinctly: It is not WHO is behind the candidate but rather WHO HE IS and WHAT HE STANDS FOR. 

Did the voters do any of that? Do the results of the Local Council Elections show us a discerning voter who is involved in large scale swings and confidence issues and is busy sending “messages” to this or that party? Not really no. You might enjoy the charade of conflicting interpretations that the PLPN circus is likely to feed you over the next coming weeks. You might love the myriad interpretations: “PN must listen. Labour has gained inroads in the North. Time for change.” Lahdidah.

In reality what happened is much simpler. Occam’s razor again. It rained. Heavily. Most people had had enough of the circus (except maybe Silvio Zammit). They just could not be bothered. Who bothered to go out to vote? The die-hards. They are the people who wouldn’t miss a trip to the ballot if they were dying. It’s ingrained. Their vote is tattooed on their brain. And then in Local Councils there are what we can assume to be the core of voters for each candidate. Families, neighbours, close friends who feel obliged to get their man in.

That is how Julian Galea, no matter what he says or does will keep getting at least around 250 votes every time he contests the Local Council elections. It is anything but an assessment of his capacity to convince voters to vote for him. If you want a litmus test for that just look at AD’s darling Mike Briguglio. In 2009 Mike got 457 votes and was not elected (Edward Cuschieri – PN – got elected on the 10th count in that election even though his first preference votes numbered 222). This time round his tally was 485 votes. Not much of a shift was there? That 28 vote increase transformed AD’s failure into success. Or at least we would like to think so.

Another way of reading the results – and by this I mean most of the results is that they are about as prophetic and indicative as tea leaves at the bottom of a teacup. Voters have neither swung nor used their votes to express any particular concern. Even less should we be worrying about those who did not bother to turn up.  Protest vote my foot. At this rate the only conclusion that I am willing to draw about these absentees is that they saw nothing available to make the trip to the ballot box worth it. More than a protest vote it is a lazily calculated snub at what  is on offer on the menu. I’m guessing there will be much less of these when the General Elections come along.

So there you have it. What have the LC Elections in 2012 taught us about your average voter? That he still remains that – average. The intelligent voter stayed at home this time round. He is still out there however.

 

Will the parties take note?

 

Categories
Politics

Thinking in 2D in the 21st Century

It’s been a week on the island and as you can see from the lack of blogging it has been a busy one. Any time I may have away from planning is dedicated to the sun and sea (or the sun and swell during the last two days). The most “politics” I get during this time is a chance to hear people out away from the comments boxes in the various blogs and online papers and so I get to compare the ethereal with the reaHave I got some (non) news for you…

There’s a lament doing the rounds out there that is worthy of Pietro Caxaro’s darned best. It is sung by each and every person who you meet and who you da provoke into talking about current affairs. There may be variants but the highlights of the lament go something like this:

1. An extreme displeasure and disgust at anything PN. Apparently the monsters of “widespread corruption”, “nepotism” and “hofor” are back with a vengeance. The general idea among nationalist card carriers is that the PN might as well vanish in a cloud of smoke – as they have become a corrupt bunch of spendthrift nincompoops who are also hell bent on installing a police state. As one ex-nationalist (yes, they are back) gently put “it: “We do not need another five years of democratic dictatorship. Conclusion: PN does not get their vote. (Inzabbu)

2. So you try to get something out of these disgruntled nationalists about o they intend to vote for. The answer is obvious. They will vote for Inhobbkom Joseph and his merry band. Fair enough I say. After all fairness is oft invoked by the intelligent (that’s sarcasm by the way) voter to justify the need of alternation in government. But do you know what kind of policies PL has? Do you know how they will be applied to, for example, shield us from the dark clouds of the economic crisis? I am not a tough client. I ask for one (that’s 1) policy that promises to improve things from the lament-inducing state of affairs. Just one. Apparently though Joseph has promised an electoral manifesto three months before the election. And anyway that is not the point it seems. It seems that the point is that the vote is not really for PL but against PN. You see? Intelligent voting is back. Apparently the new think is “better the incompetent devil you have no clue about than the thieving, host-swallowing, conniving, power-nibbling devil you’ve had enough of”. Or summat like that. Conclusion: Viva l-lejber! (Who? boqq… basta mhux PN u hi).

3. And then you plug the innocent question. So if you are telling me that the nationalists have fooled you for too long and that you do have an inkling of a suspicion that PL running on the same polluted petrol why won’t you consider for an instance using your sacrosant right to vote positively and elect a party that deserves giving its damned best shot at having its policies represented in parliament? In other words : why not vote AD? (after reading their political proposals and seeing what they have to offer). Well we know what the answer to that on is don’t we? It’s Daphne and Patrick’s Wasted Vote… the one that makes you irresponsible for risking getting one of the other devils elected. Of course if Daphne convinced you not to waste your vote last election you probably voted for the government of one-seat majority in which Ad is not a king-maker. Hold on…. but what does that make JPO? What does it make obstinate Franco Debono? An unruly Austin Gatt? Let me guess… that is the most responsible vote of the highest order. Conclusion: Vote AD? Don’t be ridiculous. (Biex jitilghu xi PN bi zball… mhux hekk)

So three and a half years after the battles of 2008 when we tried desperately on the net and in the papers to convince people that the time had come to break the stronghold of the alternating valueless devils in this country by voting in a third party nothng much has changed. This is a country that still thinks in stupid terms. Yes, stupid. Becuase if you know that voting PN again would only encourage more of the same, and if you know that voting PL would only bring about the same, same but different and you are only voting PL because you want to spite PN then you can only be damn stupid. Very damn stupid if you ask me.

a J’accuse article in The Times of Malta from February 2008:

Win or lose we go shopping after the election

So there’s this campaign going on. It pits two candidates head to head against each other. The other contestants are sort of morphed away into the background as the two personalities fight the battle in each and every quarter. They pitch the battle from their home ground where they feel most confident attacking their opponent to the shrills and cries of banner waving supporters. Occasionally they will consent to a battle of wits before a general audience. It is such battles that bring out their fortes and their weaknesses. On the one hand the man who has already surprised everyone once by getting as far as he could get and on the other the smart confident lawyer with the plan to save the nation. They battle through the stereotypical labels, they justify past records and voting trends and they are both convinced that it is with them that the nation will start its new beginning.

It’s going to be a long, drawn out campaign as early polls had already indicated. No horse is a sure bet and every little battle waged is important for the achievement of the final result. They are determined to put on a good face to the crowd. They want to be the answer to the needs of the people. “Each candidate behaved well in the hope of being judged worthy of election”. It doesn’t take Machiavelli to notice that politicians will willingly change shape in order to best suit the image that the people want to elect. A recent article in The Boston Globe asked the question whether we should really be so angry that hypocrisy is a common trait among politicians. After all does it not mean that they are trying to be more pleasing for the electorate, the author asks.

On the other hand, in this campaign, the votes against are almost as important as the votes in favour. Often the old political adage, that men and women vote chiefly against somebody rather than for somebody, is proven right. More and more campaigns are run on why not to vote for the other candidate than why to vote for your own. It is a sorry state of affairs wherever this happens and reflects a dearth of positive ideas and policies. The same applies to the mud-slinging scenarios that have become habitual. This campaign has not been spared.

One candidate accuses the other of having supported a wrong policy in the past – the immediate repartee will be on how a policy backed by the accuser had been so ineffective and hopeless. And so on it goes. Was it not once said that during a campaign the air is full of speeches … and vice versa?

The media machinery focuses as much on the glamour aspect of the politician as it will on the substance being offered. Personal background, musical preferences and how the candidate spends his spare time all form part of the wider media circus of this campaign. Meanwhile, while one side will accuse the other of being incompetent, dishonest and incapable of fulfilling its promises, the other side will retort with the same arguments. To cap it all up the independents or third parties will agree with both – giving you quite an idea of how varied and contradicting opinions can weirdly fall in the same basket.

In the middle of it all lie the voters. They are awed by the language of the demagogues, by the special effects of the presentations and by the charisma of this or that candidate. They will watch in a drunken stupor as the more arguments are piled up the more they are mollified into one or another candidates’ camp. As the song and dance goes on they are led to believe that the choice is the only one before them that counts. Everything else is yesterday and the past. Tomorrow is another story where a new beginning and a new world exists… with your candidate of choice of course. Privately the voters’ main reflection remains that democracy is being able to vote for the candidate who you dislike the least.

But Barak Obama vs Hillary Clinton will be just another chapter in the history of viciously fought campaigns. I’ve just finished reading the book Imperium by Robert Harris which chronicles the life and times of Marcus Cicero. It chronicles events close to the end of the Republican era in Rome. Elections were order of the day between circus games and foreign campaigns. Bribery, corruption, calumnious accusation and all forms of no-holds-barred campaigning seem to have been normality in that age. Thankfully it is probably no longer possible to buy more than half the representation of the senate and the tribunes as attempted by Crassus and his co-conspirators.

Bribery and politicians who sell their soul to the highest bidder are a thing of the past even though many a Michael Moore will say otherwise. Politics are made for the good of the people. Wars are waged to export democracy and not to retain control on the oil lines, building permits are given in the light of regulations and not twisted in accordance to the needs of party backers and so on and so forth. Whatever the case the US seems set to have a woman or a black man in the White House (should the Democrats make it) over 200 years after the birth of a nation. The election will be over and we will return to our daily lives. As Imelda Marcos once famously said, win or lose, we go shopping after the election.

Categories
Articles

J'accuse : The Summer Plank

I find the latest Facebook fad in Malta to be quite a happy coincidence. I’m talking about ‘planking’ of course – the ‘sport’ that has taken the Maltese corners of Facebook by storm with adults and kids alike ‘doing the plank’. The phenomenon shows many of the symptoms of any Maltese trend: it is a year or so late by international standards (rather early, that) and it has immediately divided public opinion between the pro and con crowds. And of course there are still those among us who lag behind, completely oblivious to the very existence of ‘planking’ and what it is all about.

Allow J’accuse to come to the rescue. The International Planking rules may be summarised as follows: To perform a plank one must lie horizontally, face down in a rigid stance with no expression whatsoever on one’s face. Legs must remain straight with toes pointed. The idea is to get yourself photographed in that position and then to tag that photo on Facebook with a phrase that indicates your planking intention. The international rules also add that potential plankers must plank safely and not expose themselves to undue risk.

I am told that the planking craze kicked off by chance in Malta when a clumsy attempt to plank over public furniture ended in a disastrous ‘fail’ (another web craze term). Be that as it may, planking has given us a very creative page on Facebook that has quietly slipped to the top of the popularity rankings in the place of the divorce-related pages. The divorce pages are suffering from the fickle attention span of the average ‘internet enthusiast’ and the sudden drought on the web as the summer sun gets people away from the internet and closer to the beach.

Plankuza

The intriguing part of the planking phenomenon is the manner in which it has instigated what I generally think to be a passive-reactive public to become very, very creative. While J’accuse urges respect for public furniture and above all respect for safety we cannot but bow to the genius of the man who ‘planked’ atop a bank ATM canopy on Spinola Hill up to Paceville. It remains one of our favourites. I tried the ‘sport’ myself in the pristine waters of Gћadira Bay (note: I was not the planker but the support that was necessary to elevate the aforementioned planker out of the water). Within seconds of the snapshot there were people around us nodding in enthusiastic acknowledgement and one particular dad set about explaining to his offspring what this ‘sport’ was all about.

Gћadira, by the way, is fast becoming a gem of a beach – at least as long as school is still in session and the boats have not yet started to choke the shores. Cleanliness, organisation and safety are witness to the efforts that have been taken to return our beaches to their natural beauty. I was joined in Gћadira by a friend who travelled there by bus. Actually it was a bus and a hitched ride because the original bus could not make it all the way up the hill to Mellieћa and broke down. Passengers were dumped in the summer sun and my friend who is a veteran visitor to the islands knew better than to wait for a Transport Malta alternative.

It’s sad really that the charming old buses will be leaving the streets. I made it a point to catch at least two rides (and a ferry crossing to Valletta) this time around, and snapped enough photos and collected enough tickets for my little personal scrapbook. On the whole, though, I do not think that the smoke-belching, unreliable monsters will be missed on the streets. If anything, the decision to switch to a new operator with new buses can only be greeted with gladness. I dare the Nationalist government to trumpet this achievement and to expect to reap some rewards of gratitude on this one. It is 2011 after all, isn’t it Emmanuel Delia? The absolute cock-up that was the saga of pedestrian Bisazza Street vs Arriva rescheduling has shown us that even when ushering in the obvious (a working bus system) there seems to be more than an inability to plan ahead.

The Planked

Who will pay for the ‘compensation’ that is due to Arriva for the rescheduling around a major route? Minister Austin Gatt told the press he had no clue what this bill would amount to. The man who seems to be trying to milk all the credit for the occasion, the aforementioned Emmanuel Delia – an unelected civil servant who will be contesting the next election on a nationalist ticket – fluffed with a million excuses and tried to finger the blame onto another Ministry’s late planning. What Delia failed to underline is that whether the bumbling is due to his hopeless planning skills or that of others, the bill is still to be footed by the citizen and nobody else.

The rescheduling has some other citizens up in arms. On my visits to Sliema I noticed many photocopied signs urging Sliema citizens to unite in protest at what is being done to their town. Tigné residents, it seems, are at the heart of this latest NIMBY uprising. Worse still they seem to have been marginalised by the rest of Sliema who are not impressed by the Tigné residents suddenly growing a civil conscience the moment they finally got to be on the receiving end of controversial decisions. But that’s us, isn’t it? The ‘I’m all right and sod you Jack’ mentality pervades across the voting spectrum which is why civil right activists like the tiny, undermanned Alternattiva Demokratika will be allowed into the home throughout a particular NIMBY campaign but will be ditched the moment the big issue of which networker to put in government comes around.

Cultured Planks

I have long bored readers with my idea that our current political set-up is an opiate of the people. The relativist race to zero-value perfection coupled with the nepotist networking that puts planning decisions in the hands of party-favoured goofs serves to neutralise healthy competition, to kill new ideas and to turn us into a nation of unreactive planks. Every now and then you do get some sparks of hope – as I did when attending the conference on Valletta 18 that was a prelude to Valletta’s bid to become European Culture Capital in seven year’s time. There is more about this in the blog but I’d like to say that it would be great if the effort to bridge the gap between the ‘culturati’ and those who currently live the culture unconsciously is actually made. The danger of the liberal arts closing themselves up in an elite group remains dangerously alive.

Speaking of liberals it seems to be the fashion these days for everyone and his mother to display liberal traits. This week I asked Bertu to fashion a cartoon that shows our society’s key players and their attitude towards fashionable liberalism. Just look at the papers over the past week and you will see both major parties falling over themselves trying to expose the liberal side of their ‘umbrella’ (or in Gonzi’s case – ‘rainbow’) movements. Judging by the reactions I have been listening to in social circles, the Maltese voter must be daydreaming his days away or planking to his heart’s content. The ‘we are liberal’ line is being swallowed – hook, line and sinker.

The Unexplained Planks

This week I was ‘accused’ of being too nationalist (particularly in an article in l-orizzont) and of being too anti-nationalist. It made me wonder whether people tend to remember only the parts of the article that they dislike. It does make sense really. Our basic instinct is to have our little electoral Jiminy Cricket conscience always at the back of our mind. He is there to yell out warnings whenever what we are reading challenges our ‘traditional’ voting trend and inclination. So as a nationalist voter you may skim through an article that criticises Joseph Muscat’s opportunist fashioning of his policies (and maybe nod in agreement) but your attention will only peak if (for the sake of example) I call your beloved leader Lawrence Gonzi a plonker (sic).

So as our parties refashion what they represent into two huge blocks of nothing, the voting population will dig its heels in the ground and still think in terms of black or white, red or blue. Their voting conscience remains as immovable and rigid as a planker in pose position. Unfortunately the tsunami of change promised post-referendum has only served to consolidate the ill-advised “umbrella movements” and their knee-jerk reactions.

To the Duchy

My week-long, wedding-related, visit comes to an end. There are a couple of people who I’d like to congratulate. There’s Pierre Mejlak and Chris at Merlin for the wonderful book and launch at Mdina. Dak li l-lejl iћallik tgћid is available online at Sierra Distributors and I would strongly recommend that you get a copy. Then there is the chef at Adira Lido in Gћadira Bay. I really have to thank him for a mixed seafood platter that was an out-of-this-world explosion of Mediterranean taste that would have been enough to make this latest visit home worthwhile. Thanks a million and see you again in August.

 

www.akkuza.com has reviewed Pierre’s latest masterpiece, sat through Valletta 18 and is now gearing for the latest collection of stories for www.re-vu.org. Happy birthday, Kika!

 

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